Sony wants a PS4 future without discs

"The things we want to see change, [is to have] more people embrace the digital side and have more people connect."
Shuhei Yoshida

"immediacy is a big problem in this industry. Digital is really harmed by that. The difference between an eight hour download and a 15-minute drive to retail—retail is winning that every time. Physical gaming will proliferate as long as that continues. PlayGo... is a big win for the digital side of the business...We need to make it easier for people to get into digital content, so that people don't have to wait around.'
John Koller

The fundamental problem I see with this equation is bandwidth. If we reach a point where game creation has to be limited by the average telecoms bandwidth, instead of the performance and storage limits of emerging hardware then the business model that drives customers to get excited to buy new games and hardware every 5-7years will be over and the industry will be put in permanent downward trend.

We might all agree that gameplay or story is everything to enjoying games, but it has always been visuals and implied game experiences that have been the triggers to get us to go spend money on games. Maybe the financial strain of static content creation is already so great that Sony are happy to limit creation to 50GB per game allowing telecoms to catchup in the next 10years, but by then computing power will have continued to eclipse what we have today, 4K tvs will be a decent proportion of the market and the disc media required to deliver uncompressed 4K film and games will need much more than or telecoms network and current blu-ray disc capacities.

From a telecoms perspective it seems like it will always be chasing a rainbow until game and film production quality stops evolving.

If digital downloads require a half day planning in advance to have an overnight download or longer for +200GB, then I suspect most consumers would pick up their game on disc with milk at the super market or order online and get a physical copy delivered in the same wait. Vast game worlds in high fidelity and the immediacy advantage of digital downloads are competing forces.

I can't see how its misleading. It's been obvious for a long time that digital is eventually going to take over. The question really is how and when. Sony has seen now is not the time to force the issue, however they can still nudge people in that direction my making digital more appealing than it currently is.

Edit:@Dirtbox Its in sonys interest to sell games and consoles one way or the other. If the market shows people aren't ready for digital it isn't in their interest to push too hard. Like with the PSP Go, if people had embraced it the chances are the Vita would be digital only.

Of course customers have a say. The Go sold like crap even compared to other PSP models which almost certainly led to the Vita supporting physical media.

Indeed.

Given the absolute shitstorm surrounding the Xbone and its online check-in (that is to say, people don't have a connection to check in with), the same rules will apply here, but adding bandwidth caps, download speeds and reliability into the equation.

So in other words, until it's forced on people, digital won't gain enough traction to kill physical media.

Dirtbox wrote:
Just the usual resistance to change with a bunch of hypothetical guff about people in the third world without internet then.

I think you'll find a lot of first world countries have some pretty restrictive usage caps. This isn't the same thing as the fuss with the xbox one checking in. You're talking up to 50GB for some of the current gen games, god knows what in the future. 50GB alone is many times over the usage cap of a lot of UK ISPs. Even if you have a larger cap, using a large chunk of it on a game is less than ideal.

I think the main difference between MS and Sony on this issue comes from Sony having learnt valuable business lessons with the ill advised DRM on Walkmans that successfully lost them the entire personal music player market to a device which was hugely inferior in every way, except that Apple made the DRM optional.

The result of such a poor move was to condemn the music listening public to crappy music quality in the form of mp3, and so Sony won't want to repeat this mistake by condemn gaming creativity to 10GB downloads for the foreseeable future (imo).

Change isn't always a good thing. Why wouldn't people be against something not in their best interests? Just because you happen to have a fast internet connection with no usage cap doesn't mean most people do. IIRC the average broadband speed in the UK is around 5Mbps. That would take a long time to download something like uncharted 3 or MGS4.

Edit: Its nothing to do with being a pauper. Fast uncapped internet is simply not available in some part of the country, at any price. You really seem to think simply because its right for you it's right for the majority, which isn't neccessarily the case. The majority of games are still sold on discs.

Edit 2: looks like the average has risen to 12Mbit. Still take a long time to download a game that currently fills a blu ray.

Of course customers have a say. The Go sold like crap even compared to other PSP models which almost certainly led to the Vita supporting physical media.

Like customers have ever had any say in Sony, or any corporation pushing their business interests through.

Yeah, I hear New Coke is still doing wonders for the brand...

Except you'll still buy the games and you'll still suck their cock. Shut up and tow the line like a good little consumer.

And did you post this via the power of your mind or via the service your ISP (who probably have 'consumers' in their hundreds of thousands) facilitates? No doubt typed on your keyboard made by the guy down the road with whom you bartered a service in return.

No doubt you're also sat in a hippy commune, wearing clothes you made yourself and eating food you grew from scratch?